


A Toast to the End of the World

by unknownquasar



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, Friendship, Other, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25135831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknownquasar/pseuds/unknownquasar
Summary: Just a couple of idiots at the end of the world with nothing better to do.
Relationships: Original Female Character & Original Male Character
Kudos: 2





	A Toast to the End of the World

It was the end of the world as they knew it, and they were spending it by getting drunk off their asses on stolen whiskey and watered down gin. Neither of them questioned where they got this stuff; it wasn’t as if they could go and check anyway. Besides, the two of them trusted each other enough, saved each other’s lives on multiple occasions to, at the very least, call each other allies. In times like these, having allies—real allies, not somebody who would stab you in the back at the earliest convenience—was considered a luxury. Just imagine if they didn’t run into each other when they did. Both of them would have been dead before they even left their houses, let alone have survived this long with nothing but some bottles of alcohol to their names.

If nobody knew what was going on, they might have even said it was a good day to be alive. Just look at them: two friends sat on the ledge of a roof, the sun hovering above the distant horizon and casting everything in a warm, golden glow, peace and quiet, and a good drink in hand. No responsibilities on their minds, none of that crazy revolution business, nothing. They were going to die soon, and they did not care at all. As a matter of fact, they might have even accepted it long ago. Who even knew anymore? It wasn’t important and they just wanted to enjoy what little time they had left on this accursed planet.

“D’you think I can get this in the bin down there?” Aldric pointed down to a rubbish bin all the way on the ground below, a balled-up wrapper in his other hand. His companion took one look at the target and scoffed.

“Doubt it,” answered Seraphine—Sera to her friends, Finny to Aldric only—as she brought another bottle to her lips and tipped the rest of what was left back in one. Just a couple of friends drinking away their last days on Earth.

Well, what else was there to do during an apocalypse? It wasn’t as if they were the ‘Chosen Ones’ and had to run around stopping this whole thing from happening. If there was some prophecy, they certainly didn’t know about it, and they couldn’t bring themselves to care all that much. To be honest, that was only slightly disappointing. They couldn’t even be the background characters to someone’s dramatic adventure to save humanity. They couldn’t even be the token side character who got killed off just to motivate the protagonist, so their success was ‘to honour those who were lost’. Although, by the looks of things, whoever had to take on that challenge of saving the world wasn’t doing particularly well, if the shambled remains of this society were any indication. It was like the place had taken to a Purge as soon as things turned a little bit pear-shaped. It certainly looked the part.

So Aldric really couldn’t be blamed for pulling a baseball bat out upon first meeting Seraphine (who, in turn, had pulled a shotgun on him in response). It was quite the first impression because within a few minutes the two of them had found the other to be about as intimidating as a little fluffy bunny; the gun was unloaded and almost completely busted and Aldric only had enough upper body strength to snap a twig in half. Needless to say, they called a truce fairly quickly.

“Watch me,” he challenged, scrambling to his feet despite being on the edge of a roof and swaying dangerously on the spot. Just because he had a slight something to drink didn’t mean he would lose all sense of reasoning and go about performing death-defying acts like walking along a roof ledge drunk. “Clean shot, I bet. Won’t even hit the sides.”

“Doubt it,” she repeated, more of a song this time than straight words. The bottle in her hand was empty, and she only pouted and glared at the glass in disappointment. She shoved it into the air towards her companion. “Chuck this whilst you’re at it, though. I nee—I need uh… another drink, that’s it.”

“Hey— oi! Leave that! Put that down!” Aldric scolded, swivelling on his heels to swat at Finny reaching for another bottle of gin and only getting a frustrated groan in response.

“What does it matter, Al?” She whined, flopping onto the concrete with a painful sounding thud. “We’re all gonna die anyway! Just— gimme—”

“Nuh-uh, give—” He swiped the bottle up before she had the chance to lunge for it again, even though she was in quite a graceless, tangled heap on the ground—looking more like a pretzel—and was in no state to go scuttling about and grabbing things.

Although, it wasn’t as though he was in any better state. The world tilted in his vision as he stood there, half-empty bottle in one hand and a scrunched-up chocolate bar wrapper in the other, and he was sure that the stuff running through his veins was more alcohol than blood at this point. At least he could still stand upright—

Oh no, there he went, wilting to the side (of a solid roof, thankfully) and landing on his back as the air was punched out of him. The bright side was that he didn’t spill a drop of that raspberry gin in his hand. The downside was that now his head ached from having whacked it off the hard surface upon impact. Stars speckled across his sight, blinking dots of black and white fading in and out of existence as he lay there grimacing at an indifferent sky and an even more indifferent world gone the shit.

“Ow,” he muttered, setting everything in his grip down beside him. It sounded very dull, but he didn’t exactly have the energy to go rolling around in pain. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes as he squeezed them shut, a new wave of nausea slapping him in the face from the sudden shift in balance. “That was… ow.”

“What’d you expect?” A bottle cap bounced off his face, which he could only assume was flicked by his inebriated friend over there. “Pillows, blankets, and fluffy marshmallows?”

“Maybe?”

“Idiot.”

“Hey…” He had no rebuttal. “True.”

“S’what I thought,” Seraphine muttered, words slipping and bumping together more than a bunch of kids on a Slip ‘N Slide. “We’re just— we’re both just a couple of… idiots at the end of the world with nothing better to do, huh?”

“Nope.” Aldric sighed, dropping his hands down and splaying out like a starfish. His gaze darted across the darkening sky, and they simply lay there in silence. Comfortable silence, thankfully. It wasn’t as though there was anybody around but each other who could ruin this thing for them.

If they ignored the damn-near overwhelming scent of alcohol swimming around them, they could almost say it was a nice evening. Whatever lasting notes of smoke from the literal dumpster fires from way down below had all but dissipated away with the breeze coming in from the coast, bringing in fresher, cleaner air tinged with sea salt that swept across their face like a gentle caress. It wasn’t a warm evening, even though all the days prior to this had almost all been scorching from dawn ‘til dusk. Not to mention the near-noon hours, where they felt as though their flesh was being burned straight from their bones and sweat evaporating into mist upon meeting the open air. There was also the peaceful silence, so unlike what anybody would have expected from a usually bustling city. If they closed their eyes, they wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the city centre and the distant wilderness of the countryside. Birds—gulls flying in from the beach, songbirds flitting about the few trees lining the streets—were crying their calls from way high above or just around the corner of the building they had taken refuge on. Not a single running vehicle to be seen or heard. It was almost bliss had it not been for the circumstances.

“But it’s—it’s weird, though, isn’t it?” Seraphine asked softly, blindly grabbing the water bottle and chugging half of it. Her companion turned his head to look at her, bleary eyes heavy with fatigue and eyebrows raised in confusion. “This—y’know—this whole Armageddon thing.”

Aldric blinked dumbly. He hadn’t really thought about it in the bigger sense. All he really knew was that one moment he, and he was sure a fair bit of the world’s population, was enjoying life as much as they could, living whatever mundane day they had, and the next… this was their new reality: fighting for survival and barely clinging onto the last threads of civilisation, no clue how and now no clue when this all jumped in a barrel and rolled downhill.

“I… guess?” He strained, turning his gaze back to the sky and watching the fiery amber hues fade into deep blue and darkness. “I’unno, it’s… kinda the norm now.”

“Aw, come on, can’t you see how fucked up this is?” She sat up, hair tousled and in her face. “D’you really think you could’ve handled this, like, last year?”

It was really a pointless question. Time had stopped being real about a week into the whole apocalypse; it was unlikely anybody was paying attention anymore. Although, if Aldric had half his conscious wit about him, he would have remembered he was just starting his new job this time last year. Retail, nothing snazzy, not exactly what you’d brag about at a family dinner, but he had been content with it. He had been happy with it for the time being, but now that was all in the distant past, too. Could he have handled this sheer chaos back then? Probably not. He may not have known what caused all this but he was far more innocent back in the day. It was just, at some point in recent history when things took a turn for the worst, things stopped surprising him.

“Eh, who— who even cares? Prob’ly not.” He waved a hand in the air, swatting away imaginary nuisances and letting his arm flop across his chest when he dropped it. “Nothing we can do ‘bout it now.”

And that much was true. No point dwelling on what used to be their respective normals and what they would have done if they knew what was going to happen. There was a fine line between their pessimism and a delusional person blindly dreaming about a brighter future, and the two of them just had to be doing a balancing act by walking it.

“I— ugh.” She dropped back down, gentler so she didn’t hurt herself, but still with a considerable thump backwards, eyes set to the sky as well, quietude closing around them once again.

The sunset was lovely, in any case. It was like the curtains of a theatre stage had begun closing, a thick blanket of pitch darkness overtaking the brightness and plunging the world into its natural state.

And they merely… laid there for the next eternity, feeling the world go by around them in the wind that picked up from the east and the rhythmic beating that kept them going in their chests. Soon enough, blinking, glittering stars dotted about the inky sky, completely unhindered by light or the choking clouds of vehicular pollution. This was their reality. This had been their reality for a long time. This was the reality they had come to accept far too early, and it was a reality neither of them had particularly expected would happen to them. Every day blended into the next like an awful space-time smoothie, and there wasn’t a thing they could do to unblend it.

“Hey, Finny” whispered Aldric, voice raspy and mouth dry, “d’you want another drink?”

A hesitant second.

“Sure,” Seraphine answered, equally quiet and parched. Gin waved into her view, and she plucked it from her friend’s grasp.

So, this was what it had come to. It was the end of the world and these two idiots were finding solace in each other and at the bottom of a bottle.

“My girlfriend would have loved this,” she muttered.

“Oh—” A hiccough. “—yeah, stargazers, the both of ya.”

She hummed in affirmation, lips against the bottle already and sipping tentatively. No time to get sentimental now, even though they both felt a new weight in their bodies that seemed to hold them down against the rooftop. Nope. That wasn’t good.

“Al, are you gonna throw that thing or not?”

The young man took a deep breath and hoisted himself up to stand, swiping up that wrapper again and rerolling in between his palms.

“Same as— uh, before. Not gonna hit anything on the way down.” He propped on the raised ledge, pulling his arm back as he aimed as best he could. His companion shuffled up beside him, crossing her arms on the very same ledge and resting her chin atop them as she peered over. “Hole in one.”

“You tryna make this into a bet or something?” The ‘s’ on ‘something’ dragged on a little.

“Well.” He shrugged dramatically. “I won’t complain if, say… I didn’t— didn’t have to carry our supplies around for a bit.”

“Boo.” She stood up as well, hands shoved in tattered coat pockets and eyes locked on the target down below them. “You’re on.”

He smiled to himself, pulling back that fraction more, and launched the plastic missile. It arched through the air smoothly, not a single gust of wind blowing it off course, and landed in the bin.

Clean shot. Didn’t even hit the sides.

Seraphine glared at him from the corner of her eye, pouting ever so slightly as she hopped back down with a dangerous sway over the open space. Aldric met her look with one of cheeky playfulness.

“One week.” She yawned. “Then we split the things.”

He couldn’t complain about that. Something had to liven up the sludge of mundane repetition they lived, so what was a friendly bet going to do to them? At least, for now, they had their fun whilst they could. Even as they settled down, still tipsy under the moon and stars, they knew their days were numbered.

“One week it is.”

But neither really cared.

It was the end of the world as they knew it, and they were going to spend it in the company of someone they considered good-spirited and a friend.

And that was enough, even if it wasn’t going to last.

**Author's Note:**

> For HO's dialogue OWLs. Prompt: "Can't you see how fucked up this is?"  
> Honestly, took longer to write than I thought.  
> Not beta-ed so every mistake is mine.  
> Thanks for checking this out. xx


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